The Inevitable Domino Effect

Cariboocreek

Cariboocreek

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Tires ordered. Wheels ordered. In the garage last night looking at the original grey brake calipers. Ugh. They need to be red. Soooo, any suggestions as to the best way to turn them red. Not buying covers as I think the covers are fugly. Options are OEM new and sell the current grey ones or remove the current ones for powder coat or paint. OEM new is around $1500 for parts. Powder coating is a little cheaper but essentially means a rebuild of the guts of the caliper.

Open to the CCF wisdom.
 
C SEVEN GS Bob said:
I'd go with new OEM. There might be a market for lightly used take off calipers in Canada or the USA. Shipping would be the wild card unless you can find someone local.
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That is my thoughts. Maybe get a few bucks from the old ones to offset the new cost. Then it is just a simple remove and install project and doing calipers isn't rocket surgery or brain science.....
 
Better idea. Give me the car and just start over. Not so hard right? :Biggrin:

I do agree with you that grey calibers just are not going to work. If you buy new the used callipers would have to have some value, that is the direction I would go.
 
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Take them off, clean them up and paint them. 3 or 4 light coats and they will be great...couple of cans of high temp spray paint from CT will do the trick. When the paint is dry, take a sharp blade and carefully scrape the paint off of the raised Corvette letters.

I did mine a couple years ago and they are still perfect.
 

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I vote for getting new calipers in the colour of your choice and pulling off and selling your Gray ones.

I did a reply on another message board about PC brake calipers, I wasn't too thrilled with my experience so if you decide to go that route pick a person or shop that will do it PROPERLY. Below is my post on the other MB.

"Some things to consider if you decide to PC your yellow calipers to blue or any other colour:

Does the shop have a set of the correct calipers done in the colour you want then it's a quick re&re. If you have to send in your calipers for PC they will be rebuilt with new seals and stuff nothing wrong with that but it means your car is out of commission till you get the calipers back. You can plug up the brake line connections but most cases your fluid will leak out and it will be a PITA to rebleed the whole system.

I would make sure the shop doing the PC and rebuild does it correctly. That means they get all the sand blast material out of the calipers and clean up all the threads properly and plug up all open ports properly when doing the powder coat.

Now in my case, I had a 13 GT500 and they came with Black Brembo calipers, since my car was gray I wanted to change the caliper colour to brighten up the car a bit and for some bling behind my new at the time Forgeline wheels.

I picked a local shop to do the powdercoat, since they didn't have caliper cores for my car I had no choice but to pull the calipers and plug up the open brake lines. Well, no matter what I did I could not plug them well enough so the fluid wouldn't leak out. All my brake fluid drained out eventually over the day or 2 I had the car in the air (I planned to do this during the fall when I was storing the car so I wasn't in a rush to get them back). It took the shop about a few weeks to do them, I picked them up and installed them over the winter then had a hell of a time getting the brake fluid through the whole system when I added fluid back in.

Once I got everything going for the following spring it seemed to work ok but in the back of my head I always felt that the pedal wasn't like before I did all the work. I even took it to Ford for them to redo the bleeding (always thinking maybe there was air in the ABS unit or something and they can use their equipment to activate the pumps or whatever to get the air out). It felt better afterwards but still not what I remembered.

I did a track day with the car and while I didn't have any issue shortly after I noticed a wet spot inside the barrel of my Forgeline wheels, it wasn't water but brake fluid. I quickly pulled the wheels and the pads and sure enough 1 front caliper was seeping brake fluid through the piston seal. I bought 2 caliper rebuilt kits, yanked the front calipers and took them to my friend for him to rebuild them. What I found out after he pulled them apart was that inside the cavities of the caliper where the fluid goes he blew out sand material from the shop sand blasting but didn't totally clean out the caliper properly. My friend got all the crap out, rebuild the calipers for me and I installed them back on and all was well afterwards.

So, as you can tell from my experience I wasn't too happy about this happening. The colour looked great after they were done but I was pissed at the sub par job during the process to PC them. I most definitely will not do this again on any car's brake calipers.

I wouldn't have a problem PC a bracket or solid item but if the part carries fluid or have cavities for things to go through it I personally would think twice.

Tony"
 
Rruuff Day said:
Been there done that. Saw how fast $30k turns into $100k. Worst is have another reno scheduled for this spring. $80k budget....shudder on where that will end up.... Thinking anything beyond Kraft dinner may become a luxury... :Banghead:
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It’s a good thing that there isn’t much better on the planet than KD.
 
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Rruuff Day said:
Been there done that. Saw how fast $30k turns into $100k. Worst is have another reno scheduled for this spring. $80k budget....shudder on where that will end up.... Thinking anything beyond Kraft dinner may become a luxury... :Banghead:
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Wen you start renovations, calculations are easy : budget X 2 + extras + surprises + ''while we are doing it'' and the ''ho! these furnitures doesn't fit anymore'' , now you are getting close. :depressed::depressed:
 
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So as it happens and although it may have been obvious to many of you, it came as a bit of a surprise to myself that I am an idiot. Specifically my idiocy was unable to distinguish between black and grey. I needed to get a part number and the vin of my GS so I needed to remove it’s pyjamas. Lone behold, and after 10 minutes of rooting around the car, a little voice in the back of my head began to remind me the difference between the colour black and the colour grey. How does this relate to this thread you might ask? Well…I have spent the last two days tracking down red brake calipers only because the grey ones would not look good with my new wheels. Although that is still a correct statement, what is at issue is my current callipers are a wonderful shade of gloss black. Which incidentally will go nicely with the new wheels. So the hunt for red october has ended.

My take away however is that none of my CCF friends have reminded me that I am an idiot and that revelation this morning was quite startling. So, friends should remind their idiot friends regularly that they are idiots, and help them avoid the startling and uneasy revelation that they are an idiot. Do it because you are a friend.
 
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Cariboocreek said:
So as it happens and although it may have been obvious to many of you, it came as a bit of a surprise to myself that I am an idiot. Specifically my idiocy was unable to distinguish between black and grey. I needed to get a part number and the vin of my GS so I needed to remove it’s pyjamas. Lone behold, and after 10 minutes of rooting around the car, a little voice in the back of my head began to remind me the difference between the colour black and the colour grey. How does this relate to this thread you might ask? Well…I have spent the last two days tracking down red brake calipers only because the grey ones would not look good with my new wheels. Although that is still a correct statement, what is at issue is my current callipers are a wonderful shade of gloss black. Which incidentally will go nicely with the new wheels. So the hunt for red october has ended.

My take away however is that none of my CCF friends have reminded me that I am an idiot and that revelation this morning was quite startling. So, friends should remind their idiot friends regularly that they are idiots, and help them avoid the startling and uneasy revelation that they are an idiot. Do it because you are a friend.
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Look at the bright side Al. You now have $1500 that you committed to spend on something else.... car related of course....
 
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